Images Are Still Worth 1000 Words

Pinterest hurts

Available here through Creative Commons.

Good News and Bad News.

A mere 3 lines of code on your website will send a clear message.

The method described in Educate Pinners with .htaccess gives results like the one your see illustrated above in the screenshot. Pinners pin the image of their choice, but only if they look back at their pinboard will they notice the copyright-warning image that has been automatically substituted. If they notice the message, typically, they will erase it themselves - saving YOU the trouble of DMCA notices, and controlling the message that pinners receive when they infringe on your copyright.

All of this magic is accomplished with just 3 lines of code in your website's .htaccess file.

That was the good news. Now, for the bad news.

A surprisingly large contingent of pinners is so stubbornly imbued with its self-given right to grab an artist's content in order to gain some measure of approval from total strangers on the internet ("followers") that after Pinterest itself has blocked them from pinning content from one's domain and receiving a pop up message that pinning isn't allowed, they press on and pin anyway, in which case they end up pinning a substituted copyright-warning image instead of the image they wished to pin.

Now, you'd think that after receiving two manners of copyright warnings, the pinner would pause, and infringe copyrights on another hapless website that isn't yours. If you were to think this, you'd be very wrong.

For after these two copyright warnings, a shocking number of pinners simply double-back with their browser back-button to the image search engine result page where they originally saw your image, and pin from there.

Because you put it on the internet, and no matter how many times they're warned not to take it, they're going to bloody grab that image to impress strangers, and enrich Ben Silbermann.

It's going to be very, very difficult to change things. Pinterest will have to yield. But the copyright-infringement platform is just that, and doesn't show signs of wanting to go legit.

B-I-G D-E-A-L

So. In Pinterest Gives Copyright Credit to Etsy, Kickstarter, SoundCloud, we find out that Pinterest is making some "effort" to give un-editable attribution to some big corporate friends.

BIG.
DEAL.

These corporate friends are Etsy, a well-known online craft bazaar, Kickstarter, a funding platform that's probably just a publicity-hog anyway, and SoundCloud, a music-sharing website that allows a pinner to "pin" actual songs to their pinboard, with copyright-infringement issues of its own (see this article, although they are reputed to be meticulously pro-active in their infringement detection, quite unlike Pinterest).

Just like when Pinterest removed the word "sell" from their Terms of Use, and rolled out the arrogant nopin metatag that turned copyright on its head as something that doesn't exist for Pinterest until you recode all your thousands of static pages (in some cases) to affirm your copyright against their users, this is another completely useless news report that gives the appearance that Pinterest is making some progress on the respect-copyright front when it is doing nothing at all, as usual.

Attribution doesn't absolve copyright infringement.

Halting copyright infringement may not even be on Pinterest's agenda. This may be due to Pinterest's very existence and popularity appearing to be entirely derived out of the feverish infringement binge of its users, enabled by the convenient pinmarklet.

One cannot be surprised that when Pinterest makes headlines about copyright, it's not even about copyright. It's just more smoke and mirrors to coddle its users into thinking they're working really hard for us creators, and to seat copyright infringement on the thrones of angels.


Attribution is necessary, but over-rated.
The "money" rests in distribution, not fame.

No, It's NOT Publicity

No, It's NOT Publicity

Available here through Creative Commons.

Love the Art, Hate the Artist

Love the Art, Hate the Artist

Available here through Creative Commons.

Music Lessons

The music industry was brought to its knees by copyright infringement. They have been dealing with willful ignorance of copyright laws, and the impoverishment of many musicians for years; we all know the battle is quite lost.

Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered, by David Lowery, is a long article, but it is an important read for all artists.

Recorded music revenue is down 64% since 1999.

Per capita spending on music is 47% lower than it was in 1973!!

The number of professional musicians has fallen 25% since 2000.

[...] “small” personal decisions have very real consequences, particularly when millions of people make the decision not to compensate artists they supposedly “love”.

[...]Rather than using our morality and principles to guide us through technological change, there are those asking us to change our morality and principles to fit the technological change–if a machine can do something, it ought to be done. [...] [Copyright] has worked very well for fans and artists. Now we are being asked to undo this not because we think this is a bad or unfair way to compensate artists but simply because it is technologically possible for corporations or individuals to exploit artists work without their permission on a massive scale and globally.

What the corporate backed Free Culture movement is asking us to do is analogous to changing our morality and principles to allow the equivalent of looting.

From the comments:

The message is: “Content creators, get in line to give your work away for the pleasure of possibly earning a bit of anonymous attention somewhere out over the inter-waves.”

The article is brimming with gems. A convincing point is made that people don't mind paying corporations for copyright-infringement platforms, hardware, and infrastructure, but they'd rather not pay the artists. Artists enforcing their copyrights are "copyright trolls" and "extortionists."

Please share this link:

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/

Post it on Facebook, forums, add comments about Pinterest to the article's discussion, raise awareness. Everyone should read it - the article, and the abundant comments below it.


The music industry is already on its knees.
We're next.

Blank Pins

Perusing Pinterest reveals an increasing number of blank pins -
Presumably, the result of DMCA take downs.

In this post, a list of domain names for which blank pins are found, will be updated regularly. Feel free to add to the list in the comment section.

alinasadventuresinhomemaking.com
designsponge.com
diddledumpling.blogspot.com
graphicsfairy.blogspot.com
midnightsunantiques.com
patternsshop.com
projectsbyjess.blogspot.com
puglypixel.com
purlbee.com
sugarandcharmblog.com
tipjunkie.com

Convincing Pinners Might Be An Uphill Battle

Pinterest is a pain to many creators.
Pinterest doesn't "get it." Will the public?

Meet The Real Linda Ellis is a disturbing read where a self-described innocent infringer berates a copyright holder for attempting to enforce statutory damages to the tune of $7500.00.

Linda Ellis wrote a rather simplistic poem entitled "The Dash" that some years ago has made the FWD: FWD: FWD: email rounds that grannies love to send each other. The poem is about the dash between the birth and death years on a tombstone, metaphorically speaking, the "living" between the two dates. Linda Ellis claims to have registered this work, and it has become her bread an butter, going as far as expanding the little ditty into a book about not wasting time.

When the poem was found, posted in its entirety, on April Brown's website, Linda Ellis sent her a demand for $7500 for the use of her poem.

What resulted is a very long exchange that, regardless of the merits of the poem, demonstrates the entrenched disregard and the deep lack of understanding of copyright law found in some segments of the general public.

While it's easy to sympathize with Brown's shock, anger and frustration at having to pay an amount many, many times greater than the value of her use of the poem, her misadventure illustrates the pitfalls of using a copyright-infringement platform like Pinterest.

Like a minefield, most of the steps you will take won't blow your leg off, but eventually, you, or someone in your village will be the unlucky one to pay the price.

If the Brown/Ellis conflict is any indication, creators attempting to defend their copyright against pinners (because Pinterest itself rejects all blame in their ToS) will be labelled copyright trolls, and the infringers, innocent infringers.

Ben Silbermann may wax poetic about making Pinterest "beautiful" but Pinterest is a hideous reality to the many creators whose contents its users grab, for it to commercially exploit some time in the near future, as the hiring of Tim Kendall suggests. If creators don't defend their copyright, they lose; if they defend it, they lose, too - legal fees and public opinion.

Thanks, Ben.

Pinterest Bracing Self Against Lawsuit(s)?

Several weeks after hiring Tim Kendall, Facebook's monetization man, Pinterest has enlisted no less than former Google Deputy General Counsel Michael Yang as its first General Counsel.

To speculate, it is possible that Pinterest will take advice and actually become respectful of copyrights and take serious steps to educate their users. It is also possible that Pinterest intends to unleash punishing legal challenges should any creator(s) dare to take them on.

If creators are hoping to continue making a living off their images and protecting their copyrights against the actions of Pinterest's users and those of present and future Pinterest-clone users, they must make their voices heard - they will have to scream at the top of their web-lungs. Begging "pinners" to try to understand their plight or educating "pinners" (something Pinterest seems loathe to do) on how pinning may hurt creators' livelihoods.

There are some that think creators have already lost the battle, and ought to give up their copyrights and associated livelihoods lest they become the "bad guys."

I’m wondering if everyone has come to the same conclusion: no company is ever going to bring a copyright infringement suit against a Pinterest user. [...] Sending a Pinterest user a letter instructing them to remove your copyrighted materials and accusing them of copyright infringement is [...] a total slap in the face.
-Catlan McCurdy

While Ms. Mc Curdy sides with the popular internet behemoth, the small artists continue to hurt: Ellen Ward, who publishes wonderfully spontaneous drawings, is another David against the Pinterest-Goliath.

Do we have a slingshot?

Finding Your Work On Pinterest PART 8

After a DMCA take-down using their online form, Pinterest does not remove every version of your image.

It keeps two, sometimes a third, all of which are publicly accessible, and very much hotlink-able. Two are very large.

This is such an egregious violation of the DMCA safe harbor, nothing else needs to be said. Be sure never to use their online form. Always email them a list of all images as instructed here.
Ouch.

What Pinterest Must Do To Get Along With Copyright Holders

~ If We Actually Respected Copyrights ~
A Pinterest To-Do List

Have a function where a webmaster can request that ALL images from his/her website that are already pinned be removed everywhere on Pinterest without having to chase them individually.

The default state for a website is that pinning is not allowed. To allow pinning, site must be enabled by webmaster. Critical traffic mass has been achieved - awareness of Pinterest is high enough that sufficient numbers of webmasters will enable pinning.

Print-on-Demand (POD) site users should be able to submit image URLs that they disallow even if the POD site permits pinning sitewide.

Make a serious effort to educate their users, geared at encouraging pinning from own material, Pin-It buttons, and Creative Commons. Educate users about finding images from the Creative Commons.

Remove all publicly accessible images targeted by a DMCA take down notice. If images that are taken down need to be retained for some legal reason, let that be in a place not accessible by anyone but site admin and with password protection. Right now, an image that is taken down can still be hotlinked by clever fourth party websites.

Ditch the EMBED button entirely. Many people that don't mind having their work pinned are horrified with the prospect of having their images embedded on unknown fourth party websites.

Educate Pinners With .htaccess

Have your own website? Here is a chance to educate the pinners with a message, and stop pinning at the same time - all with a single piece of cut-and-paste code that can disable pinning sitewide. Two birds with one stone.

Simply add the code of your choice, below, to your .htaccess file. When attempting to pin an image from your website, unbeknownst to them, the pinners will be posting something completely different, that will be seen by all their followers! There is a lot of potential to reach pinners with this method. The images are hosted on flickr.


To use this image:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterest [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://farm8\.staticflickr\.com/7099/7286791720_017f7f2cba\.jpg [R]

To use this image:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterest [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://farm8\.staticflickr\.com/7220/7203313120_708e9a7229\.jpg [R]

To use this image:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterest [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://farm8\.staticflickr\.com/7080/7167093018_58b755d606\.jpg [R]

To use this image:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterest [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://farm9\.staticflickr\.com/8158/7003734640_55920c978d\.jpg [R]

To use this image:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterest [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://farm8\.staticflickr\.com/7238/7003187122_e1a58a8202\.jpg [R]

To use this image:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterest [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://farm8\.staticflickr\.com/7084/7002973012_8535692c4e\.jpg [R]

To use this image:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterest [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://farm6\.staticflickr\.com/5275/7000674678_c5a1b80ba4\.jpg [R]

To use this image:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterest [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://farm8\.staticflickr\.com/7080/7107060703_aec6eba365\.jpg [R]